QA Advance Volunteer List?

[Tom Chance]

Jamethiel,

That does sound like a good idea. Perhaps one could go further to say that 
people can sign themselves up on the web site for work to do immediately, 
simply so we and any potential contributors can see who is working, or 
willing to work, on what.

What do people think?

Tom

On Wednesday 03 Mar 2004 15:51, Jamethiel Knorth wrote:
> I am hoping that a service could be offered by the Quality Team to have
> people sign up in advance to be active at a later date. That is very
> unclear, so let me explain:
>
> I could sign on now, giving my e-mail to a list, basically saying, "I'm
> really busy and can't work now, but call me when a lot of work is needed."
>
> That sounds really bad, but the idea would be that, when the next version
> of KDE was primed for release, right when the feature freeze went in,
> everyone who had put themselves on that list would be e-mailed. I am
> somewhat in this situation right now. I post a bit on KDE-Usability, and
> don't have enough time on my hands to really work on the Quality Team.
> However, I could spare a week or three once a year to really get down to
> business when the feature freeze is in.
>
> Also, from my experience with programs, it is very hard to write
> documentation before a feature freeze. Screenshots are out of date almost
> the second they are taken, howto's never exist for the new (and as such
> unknown and in need of a howto) features, and options will move or
> disappear the instant you write down where they are.
>
> I am not up to doing any sort of QA work on a regular basis, but I would
> love to lend my help during crunch time, those couple weeks before the
> final release.
>
> Hopefully, that reminder e-mail could also include some other useful
> information, such as:
>
> - The programs that seem to really need help (they have NO docs, they
> haven't even started doing What's This? help or tooltips, their interface
> needs vetting, they're getting tons of bug-reports without much
> substantiation behind them)
> - The exact CVS commands to check out the right CVS version, as well as any
> known build issues and workarounds, so all the QA guys are actually doing
> QA on the right program.
> - A very simple format in which QA guys should report the issues they find
> (maybe a really good template set, so they could say: "Program: Konqueror,
> Issue: Documentation of Toolbar Editor, Solution: *really long help chunk*"
> - How to check which problems have already been noted by other QA people,
> and which programs have been gone over how many times (obviously, that
> would also need a server where QA people could note that they checked
> something).
>
> So, that last one was a bit too much to hope for, as was the good template
> set, quite likely. I can dream.
>
>
>
>
> I do worry that this idea might result in many potential contributors
> deciding to only contribute before a major release, but I don't think the
> harm would outweigh the benefit. Many, many people just don't have the time
> to really contribute regularly, but could spare a lot of hours for a couple
> of weeks each year. Also, it might encourage people who would otherwise be
> reluctant, as their efforts would directly improve the version of KDE that
> they are about to receive.
>
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